


Minisode 3

by ziskandra



Category: To the Moon Series (Video Games)
Genre: Mildly Dubious Consent, Multi, Woke Up Married After A Drunk Night, Woke Up Poly-Married
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:07:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25531075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ziskandra/pseuds/ziskandra
Summary: Okay, so maybe they had all gotten married on a drunken whim in the name of science, but that didn’t answer all of Neil’s questions.
Relationships: Robert Lin/Eva Rosalene/Neil Watts/Roxanne Winters
Comments: 6
Kudos: 10
Collections: Just Married Exchange 2020





	Minisode 3

**Author's Note:**

  * For [JujYFru1T](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JujYFru1T/gifts).



Neil woke up the morning after Christmas with a pounding headache, curled up underneath a thin blanket on the floor of his Sigmund Corp office. Neither of these circumstances were particularly unusual, what with his chronic pain and self-professed workaholism, but that was where the normalcy of his current situation begun and ended.  
  
This morning, unlike every other morning, he wasn’t alone.

It was as though his brain activated in stages: for several blissful moments, he simply enjoyed the warmth and comfort of being held in another human’s arms. Then, his body flooded with sheer icy panic as he realized _that he was being held_ _in someone’s arms._ In fact, he was actually sandwiched between two other people; the soft curves of his partner’s behind pressed suggestively against his hips, long dark hair falling gracefully down her back.   
  
The familiar fragrance of Eva’s shampoo wafted into Neil’s nostrils. The scent triggered his limbic system as his panic turned into terror and he sat bolt upright, the pounding of his heart thundering in his eardrums.

There was only one word (expression, really) for the predicament in which he found himself. “Ay, caramba!” he shouted, to almost immediate response from the bodies on either side of him.  
  
Eva’s response was predictable, at least in part. “You don’t speak Spanish,” she murmured, as she rolled towards him, draping an arm across his lap.  
  
Half-convinced that this was one of these dreams that flirted dangerously with becoming a nightmare, the other voice that spoke only served to confirm his suspicious. “Nobody wants to hear dated television references at seven in the morning, Neil.”  
  
Oh, no.

Oh no, oh no, _oh no._

Just what the hell was Robert Lin doing in his office? Becoming increasingly convinced that none of this was real, Neil decided he might as well have a bit of fun with the situation. “Good morning, Bob!” he exclaimed with all the cheerfulness he could muster. “Didn’t see you there!”  
  
Why wasn’t the man moving, and why did he appear to have no clothes on?

“For the last time, my name is – “

A sleepy giggle bubbled up from Robert’s other side and it was in that moment Neil realized he had underestimated the number of bodies on his office floor. 

He’d thought there were three, but there were actually four.  
  
“Good morning,” chirped Roxie, pushing herself upwards with a large yawn. “Some evening, huh?”  
  
“You don’t say,” Neil answered drily, daring a brief glance downwards at Eva’s sleeping form. Nope, he still wasn’t sure if this wasn’t a dream or a nightmare. Perhaps if he was more convinced, he would take the risk and thread his fingers through her hair, but maybe this was reality after all in which case he was going to be so, so murdered once she woke up. Feeling that he had nothing to lose except his dignity and that was pretty much gone anyway, he chanced a question. “Mind, uh, filling in the blanks? For the rest of us who might have had a liiiitle too much company-supplied eggnog last night?”  
  
He really needed to stop overdoing it at these corporate functions.

Robert, too, was starting to sit up. Without warning, he jabbed an angry finger at Neil’s chest. “You,” he started, the word punctuated with another jab, “need to take better care of your partner.”  
  
Roxanne laid a gentle hand on her partner’s shoulder. “Lay off him. He’s trying his best.”  
  
The implication that his best wasn’t good enough stung, but he shoved it deep down, where he buried all of Eva’s witty retorts and sharp insults. Taking a deep breath and regrouping himself, he puffed out his chest and summoned all of his bravado at once. “Did you hear that, Bob? I’m trying!”  
  
Robert massaged his temples with one hand. “Trying to get us all killed, perhaps.”  
  
Spreading his arms wide, Neil gestured at the room, his office, and the occupants thereof. “But did we die?” He grinned. “I’m chalking this up as a win.”   
  
Neil’s bluster was short-lived as Eva once again started stirring on his lap. His face paled as his partner’s eyes fluttered open.  
  
Maybe his proud declaration of survival had come too soon. Watching as Eva’s brow furrowed in concentration as she did her best to focus on his face, Neil quietly embraced his imminent death.  
  
His expected murder did not come. “You fell asleep with your glasses on,” murmured Eva, and Neil thought he must’ve misheard her at first.

“I’m sorry, what?”  
  
“Your glasses,” Eva repeated, with a hint of irritation. “I told you to take them off—”

“Hang on,” Neil interrupted. There was a lot of mystery and uncertainty he could put up with, but the fact that Eva (a _half-naked_ Eva, his brain unhelpfully surprised) hadn’t decked him in the face once she’d realised the compromising position in which they’d found themselves was simply too much to handle. “Will somebody please tell me what the asparagus is going on here?!”  
  
“Hey,” Eva chided, although there was no genuine heat in her words. “That’s my line.”  
  
“Oh dear,” Roxanne mused, “I think we’re going to need more coffee.” Pushing aside what Neil now realised was a veritable _pile_ of blankets out of the way, Roxie got to her feet. Neil’s face coloured as he realized that she was wearing Robert’s memory traversal agent lab coat, with nothing underneath.

“Don’t you, um, think you should put some clothes on?” he asked, but Roxie brushed off his concerns with a wave of the hand.

“It’s the holidays,” she assured him. “Even though we’re all on-call, everyone’s working from home.” With a shrug and a pointed glance in Neil’s direction, she added, “Well, most of us are, anyway.”  
  
Satisfied that she had at least not gone for the obvious jibe and teased him about the Sigmund Corp HQ being his home, he worked on his own wakefulness. At least, for whatever reason, he still seemed to have his clothes on. Eva began to sit up as well, and he found himself missing the weight of her against his lap, even though he knew he had done nothing to deserve it, even though he’d be a liar if he said he _hadn’t_ been dreaming of something like this happening on-and-off since middle school.  
  
Although, not even in his wildest fantasies had Robert Lin ever been involved. But that was a story for another time.

The man himself had been blessedly silent, or maybe Neil had just been ignoring him. It was difficult, however, to overlook the other man’s imposing size by his side once he reminded himself of it, and although Robert’s expression seemed more-or-less inscrutable, Neil couldn’t help but think that Robert was enjoying himself, somehow. Enjoying watching Neil suffer, probably. Although there had been a suspicious lack of suffering thus far.

Slowly, Robert began to speak, and Neil willed himself to listen. “You don’t really remember anything?” he asked. “Even if it was your idea?”  
  
Neil took a moment to try and force his mind to remember the events of the prior evening. It came in flashes: the now-yearly tradition of trying to prank Eva (the yearly tradition of him failing, but details!), doing his best to avoid the party, and Eva dragging him down anyway, showing Eva that he had finally finished his _To The Moon_ game, as promised, just late, the endless protesters, more and more than the year before…

“The marriage registration website,” Eva added, as she buttoned up her once-discarded shirt and Neil resolutely forced himself to focus his gaze upon her face. “Remember? You were all, ‘surely there’s more to marriage than paperwork’, but we tried to remind you that those laws had changed two years ago…” She trailed off with a shrug. “You know what you’re like when you’ve set your mind to something.”  
  
“Yes,” Neil said in easy agreement, before quickly doing a double-take. “Wait, what? Are you saying we got married to prove a point? And that you _agreed_?” Honestly, he didn’t know what the strangest aspect of this whole situation was. Yeah, he’d always been a bit of a romantic compared to his partner, but that barely explained anything!  
  
“Not just her,” Robert interrupted, his heavy baritone never failing to run a chill down Neil’s spine. “The four of us, together.”

“What the f—” The expletive died on Neil’s lips as Roxie nudged the office door open with a foot, a tray of steaming coffee cups in her hands.  
  
“I’m back,” she sung out as she made her way to Neil’s desk to set down their beverages. “What’d I miss?”  
  
What did she miss? Neil hardly knew where to begin.

“When were you going to tell me we got _married_?” he choked out, looking at each of the other people in the room in turn.

Roxie cocked her head as she passed Neil his cup. “After I got our coffee, silly. I thought I said that already.”  
  
“Patience, Neil.” Robert. Of course. Neil rolled his eyes.  
  
“Always the tone of surprise.” As always, somehow Eva’s blows were the lowest of all. Not that he’d tell her that. He wouldn’t want her getting a big head or anything.

“We’re all scientists here,” said Robert, and Neil braced himself for another lecture. “We wouldn’t be in our line of work if we didn’t believe in testing the boundaries and limitations of technology, of human innovation—”  
  
“Of testing poorly designed government websites,” Roxanne interrupted with a giggle. “We shouldn’t have been able to register a four-way marriage, but…”  
  
“The site doesn’t actually stop you,” supplied Eva.

Okay, so maybe they had all gotten married on a drunken whim in the name of science, but that didn’t answer all of Neil’s questions. He wondered, for a moment, whether he should ask at all, but it had been a long time since he’d had a shred of self-preservation.

“All right,” he started, “okay. I guess I just have one last question.” He pushed his glasses up his nose. “Why were the rest of you naked?”  
  
Roxie laughed. Robert huffed, raised an eyebrow. Eva averted her gaze. The trio were silent for several long moments before Roxanne (of course it was Roxie) broke the silence. “Well, we’d just gotten married, so…”

Unbidden, flashes of memory played through Neil’s mind. Roxie teasing Eva, before diving in for a kiss. Robert interrupting, tapping on his partner’s shoulder, _I’ll show you how it’s done_ , Eva turning her attention to Neil with an expression he’d only dreamt of, threading his fingers through long dark hair, their first kiss since middle school (which barely counted), Robert removing his own shirt, revealing a surprising musculature for a man his age, Roxie and Eva letting out an _ooh_ of appreciation, running fingers over his chest, Robert catching Neil’s eye, _you can touch me too_ , Robert had said.  
  
Neil’s face flushed and he quickly sought to stymie any further elaboration. “That’s enough,” he said, hands raised in defeat, “I have a very active imagination.”  
  
Eva chanced a glance at him then, chestnut brown eyes framed with long dark lashes. Neil held a breath despite himself. “We don’t need to let this affect our working relationship. Just forget anything ever happened,” she told him in an echo of the words he’d heard her say so many times before.

_I like to keep my personal and professional life separate._

There was a difference this time, though: they were no longer alone. Neil was surprised when it was Robert, and not Roxanne, who spoke up next. “Unless you’d rather remember.”  
  
One didn’t spend years working at Sigmund Corp without developing a healthy respect for memories: they spent so much time working to craft the best possible life for their clients. In one, almost hysterical, moment Neil wondered what it would be like to shape his future now, instead of waiting for his inevitable deathbed. Mouth drier than he’d care to admit, still disbelieving that he was saying these words to _Robert Lin_ of all people, he confessed, “I think I’d like to try.”  
  
He couldn’t bring himself to look at Eva in that moment, but he was soon surprised to hear her voice, softer than usual, “I’d like to try, too.”  
  
Roxie clapped her hands together. “Oh, goody, it’s decided. You know what? I’m going to print off our certificate!”

Neil started at Roxie’s retreating figure with a newfound appreciation of the view. Hey, they were married now, he was allowed to look, right? “You know, when she gets back, I wouldn’t mind an encore performance of last night.”  
  
Eva whacked him on the shoulder. “Yeah, that’s because you fell asleep.”  
  
Gingerly rubbing the spot where she’d hit him, Neil couldn’t find it in his heart to be properly mad at Eva. He never could. Especially now that he’d kissed her, could kiss her again, if he wanted to!  
  
“You know,” Robert said, “this doesn’t really change much. Well, I can’t speak for the four of us, but you two already acted like an old married couple.”  
  
“Seriously,” said Roxie, leaning against the doorframe. “You’re worse than the McMillans.”  
  
“No we’re not!” protested both Eva and Neil in perfect unison.

Roxie was the first to laugh, eyes crinkling as she doubled over. But the other three soon joined in.

Some days, one just had to laugh.


End file.
